The Great Divide
by Dracoqueen22
Summary: Oneshot. Optimus and Megatron meet for one last conversation after the final battle. Sequel to "To Wish Impossible Things".


a/n: This hasn't been edited but I've looked over it several times. The stuttered, incomplete sentences were intentional. Other grammatical mistakes were not. Please enjoy.

**Title: The Great Divide**

**Universe: Bay, post-DotM, novelization ending**

**Characters: OptimusxMegatron**

**Warnings: sparkmerging, angst, twincest**

**Description: Optimus and Megatron have one last conversation before they go their separate ways. Sequel to _To Wish Impossible Things. _**

**Dedication: For ancientlybroken in response to the flash fiction prompt "what have I done?" **

* * *

This is the absolute bottom. He has sunk as low as he can go. He can fall no further.

This is the end of a legacy, the last dregs in the bottom of a cube. He has become more pathetic than the fleshbag insects that inhabit this planet. He has failed in every sense of the word. Himself. His ambitions. His position.

_Optimus_.

Megatron snarls, claw raking across a defenseless cliff face, tearing gouges into rock still younger than the entire Cybertronian race. Some day, years and centuries from now, a curious human will come across these marks and wonder what caused them. How they were formed. They will make a great significance from nothing more than a disgraced warrior's rage.

Pathetic. Witless. Foolish.

This is what he has become. Pain and anger and utter defeat. Pieces of himself falling in rusted decay like that traitor Jetfire. No medic to fix him, no medic to care. His mentors extinguished.

This isn't mercy. This is cruelty. Optimus had spared his life, but what life is there to spare. What existence is this? This misery?

It hurts. It _aches_. It's a pain that's deeper than his spark. So deep he could claw open his chassis from one end to the other and never be free of the torment. It's a searing agony, a dismal stench of failure without even the honor of a warrior's death.

He's sunk as low as he can go. He can sink no further. Not even if he fell into the Pit itself. There is no worse fate.

A noise in the night. A footstep. Hissing hydraulics. The soft clank of metal on metal. The ping of a Cybertronian.

Megatron whirls, cannon spinning uselessly. He hasn't the energon to form ammunition or to power his blade. He's defenseless. His spark twists and surges, striking out with acid pain, making him stagger.

He catches himself on a large boulder, staring furiously at the mech who disturbs his solitude. At the bright gleam of Autobot-blue optics and the faint glint of moon off flame-red and blue armor.

Prime. Of course.

"Come to gloat over my defeat, _Prime?_" Megatron snarls, vocalizer a glitched hiss of rage and impotence. He's indignant without the strength to back it up. He's itching for a fight that his exhausted processor can no longer support.

Pity. Far too much pity for Megatron's comfort. It emanates from the Prime's energy field. He's unsteady on his pedes, lurching toward Megatron before drawing back again, a grimace of pain in his optics.

Perhaps he, too, is feeling the strain of their agonistic bond. The tether so tenuous and thin it is a miracle of Primus it hasn't stopped.

No, not a miracle. A curse. A curse of Primus to tie them together like this. For all eternity.

"I came to deliver a message," Prime says, his optics never leaving Megatron, his gaze like a traction beam, trying to pull Megatron in.

Trying to convince him to give in to the yearning of his spark, to touch his brother in something more than pain and fury. To recall the days of millennia ago, when they would embrace, when Optimus' gentleness was a soothing balm. When Optimus could vent his frustration on Megatron. When they could be as they were around each other if no one else.

Orns that are long passed. Orns that will never exist again.

Megatron's arm whips out, slashing down another ancient tree, by the fleshbag's measurements in any case. "A message? How quaint."

"The humans expect all surviving Decepticons to be gone by noon tomorrow," Prime says, and pauses, his vocalizer spitting static for a moment. "I will be staying here on Earth with the rest of the Autobots."

His spark lurches in betrayed torture and Megatron grinds his denta. "You are abandoning Cybertron?" he hisses, stalking a step toward his once-brother. He glares at the echo of a once-great Prime, standing reflected in the optics of a once-great Lord High Protector.

"I am giving you a chance to fix what you have broken," Prime corrects and takes a step toward Megatron, managing to loom despite the Decepticon leader having several feet on him. "To atone. To prove to all our kind that you can be the Lord High Protector I believe you to be."

Megatron's optics flash. "And you?" he demands, hand slamming into Prime's shoulder, ignoring the frisson of static that passes in the brief contact. "You are no more our Prime than I am our High Protector."

Prime stands his ground, but his optics shift downward, focusing on the damage visible still on Megatron's chassis. "It would be a lie to claim otherwise."

Megatron laughs, but it is bitter and rank with disgust. "What a pair we make, _Prime._" He sneers and throws his arms out, a wide gesture. "The Prime who is fallen and the High Protector who no longer _protects_. No wonder our kind is aimed at extinction."

The Autobot's helm snaps up, optics brightening, despair flickering in his energy field. Emotions so tantalizing to Megatron, whose spark is hungering for more, desperate for a taste, yearning for reconciliation.

"I did not start this war, _Megatron_."

"No, but you've sure as the Pit guaranteed to finish it." Megatron's hands form shaking fists, pent-up failure twisting and coiling inside of him. "We are both to blame, Prime. Don't trick yourself into thinking otherwise."

Prime takes another step forward, until there is barely any space between them, enough that Megatron can feel the tickles of the Prime's ex-vents over his broken frame.

"I will not grant you the deactivation you seek," Prime hisses, vocal tones low and sharp, proof before Megatron that they are still the ruling diad. That Prime can be as brutal as his twin, only it is better hidden.

His hand whips out, fingers curling in Prime's frame, claws hooking around protruding Earth kibble, jerking the Prime toward him. Megatron is shaking, the trembles beginning in his pedes and traveling up his backstrut. He can't remember the last time he was so close to his brother without there being a blaster or a blade between them. His spark is a surging flame inside its chamber, energies licking at the battered frame, pulsing and pushing and sending agonized curls of electricity outward.

"Give me your spark," Megatron snarls, and horrifies himself with how the words emerge half-demand and half-desperate plea.

Prime stares at him for a long moment, something inexplicable passing in his energy field. His chestplates part with a whine of stripped gears, a loud noise in the silence of their surroundings. The pale blue flicker of his spark lights up the night.

"Will it ease our pain?" Prime asks, standing there with his spark pulsing and pushing, tendrils licking out, reaching and reaching for Megatron. Beckoning. Inviting.

Megatron doesn't know how to answer that. He's not certain of anything more. Save the pain, the agony that demands he crack his own chestplates open. It's not hard to do. Half of his chest armor is little more than shreds, easily shoved aside to reveal the purple-blue tint of his own spark. He winces, spark energies lashing out, drawing him toward Prime like polar magnets.

"We will see," Megatron replies and he pulls them together, closing the last few feet of space until they are pressed, chassis to chassis, spark to spark.

It is, at once, pain and pleasure combined. Megatron snarls, throwing his head back, howling his agony to heavens. Guilt and despair twine into one, Prime pulsing hot and bright, dark with his own failure.

Megatron's circuits are ablaze, gears locked with sensation. Every sensor is aflame, the smell of scorched metal thick in the air. Prime groans, twitching against him, back bowing as their sparks entwine. Coil together as they once had been, merged when given life by the All Spark. Separated for a time. Merged again when they had been given titles. Separated once more when war divided them.

He feels whole and disjointed, united and torn asunder. He is Prime, racked with guilt, with selfish recrimination. He cannot go home. He does not deserve to return to Cybertron. A tainted Prime cannot rebuild.

Megatron shivers, lost in Prime's despair, trapped by Prime's desperation. It's cold here, cold and lonely.

Prime's hand reaches out, fingers hooking into armor plating on Megatron's side, gripping as though refusing to let go. The matrix, nestled next to his spark, pulses out as well, reaching for Megatron. He tries to draw back, away from the ancient presence, but it is tenacious and his spark refuses to release Prime's.

_What did you hope to accomplish_? It demands with a thousand voices and a thousand tones and a thousand accents. _What have you to show for it? _

Megatron's grip on Prime's tightens.

_You were the best of us_. It accuses.

_You are the worst of us. _It sneers.

Shame. It is a terrible sensation.

Megatron growls, spark spinning wildly. He is proud and he is ashamed. Once, he had a purpose.

_The past can be reborn again. _

No! The past is dead. Gone. Megatron would rather suffer a thousand deactivations before he'd allow Cybertron to return to the way it was. The universe may not be his, but he'll be slagged before he'll become Primus' puppet again. Before he'd let Primus control him _or_ Optimus ever again.

Never will fate define them. _Never_.

The matrix's presence vanishes like a puff of smoke, leaving Megatron gasping, drowning in the sensation of his twin. The pleasure tinted with pain. The visions of the past. The thrum of Prime's vocalizer, the familiar press of his spark.

Charge crackles across and through him. Megatron shouts, clutching Prime, as his overload tears over his sensory net. As his spark burns brighter and brighter, purple flashing to white, static crawling across his damaged frame.

Prime roars, hand pawing at Megatron, hooking in armor plating and keeping him close. Preventing him from tearing away.

Prime jerks and writhes, blue fire crawling over his frame, battle mask sliding aside in a frank moment of vulnerability. He, too, throws his helm back, arching up against Megatron, metal sliding against metal in a delicious friction that nearly sends Megatron into another overload.

Beautiful. Not even the millennia can change this fact. Even scarred and tainted and hateful, Prime is still beautiful.

No. Not Prime.

Optimus.

With a stuttered ventilation, Megatron forces himself away from his twin, shoving their frames apart, their sparks separating with an agonizing snap of energies. It's like acid pouring over his circuits and he clutches at his chestplates as he puts distance between himself and Optimus.

His twin staggers back, catching himself against a boulder, chestplates sliding closed in instinctive need to protect that which is most vulnerable. His battle mask snaps shut with a defining click.

Silence descends upon them, Megatron fighting for control, for the proper words.

Optimus, too, seems to be struggling. "We are not so different," he finally says, words empty of any other defining glyphs.

"We are the same spark," Megatron agrees and turns his back on his brother, hands at his sides, fingers curling into fists. "Yet it is not enough."

"No. It is not."

Megatron squares his shoulders, staring defiantly into the dark wood. "Go back to your fleshlings, Optimus. I will rebuild Cybertron. And I will do it without you."

He leaps into the air, frame twisting into his alt mode, and soars off into the night sky with a blast of his thrusters. If Optimus has anything else to say to him, Megatron doesn't have the audials to hear it. Nor the comm system. There is nothing left to say, no way left to mend, nothing left to do.

He can still feel Optimus, the vibrations of his brother's spark, the lingering emotions between them. Even as the distance increases and he leaves the atmosphere and Earth behind him.

This is the end they have wrought. The only logical conclusion. No such thing as a happy ending. Not for the fallen Prime. And not for the fallen High Protector.

* * *

a/n: I don't believe that there will be any more in this series. Two fics are it. Unless, of course, someone should happen to hit me with another inspiring prompt. I won't discount that possibility. *grins*

Feedback is welcome and appreciated.


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